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A Hops Harvest in Brooklyn

By Patrick Farrell November 7, 2011 4:18 pmNovember 7, 2011 4:18 pm

Georgia Kral/Patch.com

They were hard to miss: flowering vines that climbed more than a dozen feet above a cramped garden patch near the busy intersection of Smith and Bergen Streets in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. The flowers, it turns out, were hops — the sticky green buds that put the bitter into English bitter and the spicy snap into Czech pilsner. And with their recent harvest, New York City has made a small contribution to a brewing renaissance.

In his Dining article, Daniel Fromson tells how brewers and farmers in central New York, and around the country, are trying to resurrect a long-abandoned tradition of planting hops and making beers that are truly local. The cause sounds like a natural for brew-happy, locavore Brooklyn, but its arrival in the borough has come more or less by accident.

Andrew Casner, a Bushwick artist, created the garden last summer as an art project and green space, called the Hop Stop, sponsored by the city transportation department’s Urban Art Program and the Boerum Hill Association. As reported on a local news site, the Carroll Gardens Patch, he chose hops in part because the height they can reach — as much as 30 feet — makes them “a living sculpture.”

But also on his mind was the notion of using them to make a locally hopped beer, said Dave Liatti, owner of a nearby bar, 61 Local, that pitched in to keep the bed watered. “The plants did well enough over the summer that we were able to make a little hop harvest,” said Mr. Liatti, who handed the flowers over to Fritz Fernow, a salesman in the printing business who brews beer in his Cobble Hill home.

Mr. Fernow dried the hops in his oven — 15 minutes at 130 degrees. “The house had a nice lemony-garlicky aroma to it,” he said. He shopped at Brooklyn Homebrew, in Gowanus, for barley that was grown and malted in Massachusetts.

And a brew was born: Coppin’ Hops Ale, in a batch of about five gallons that is now fermenting in Mr. Fernow’s basement. When it is kegged, sometime in early December, the bar plans to pour free samples for customers. (New York, like many states, does not allow the sale of home brews.)

Some breweries in the city use upstate hops for special brews, but Coppin’ Hops may well be the first with New York City hops. The taste? Mr. Fernow detects “a little bit of a caramel background to it, and citrusy hop flavor.” The ale qualifies as his annual “harvest brew,” and if nothing else, it keeps him from having to make some obligatory drink he doesn’t enjoy, like a pumpkin beer. “Five gallons is a lot to brew,” he said, “so you’d better make sure you like it.”